WHILE STILL A novice at Wimborne, the future saint Leoba (ca. 710– 782) dreams of drawing an immensely long purple thread from her throat:

As an anonymous (but obviously communally important) “soror quaedam maturae aetatis, quae ex eventu rerum quas saepe praedixerat prophetiae spiritum habere noscebatur” (aged nun who was known to possess the spirit of prophecy) interprets it, that thread more explicitly signifies “doctrina sapientiae […] ex illius corde procedans” (the wise counsels she will speak from the heart). And “porro globus, qui volvendo conficitur et rotunditate sui volubilis est, mysterium exprimit verbi divini, quod per os actusque praedicantium volvitur et nunc per activam vitam in imis versatur, nunc per contemplativam in sublimia erigitur” (the ball which she made by rolling it round and round signifies the mystery of the divine teaching, which is set in motion by the words and deeds of those who give instruction and which turns earthward through active works and heavenward through contemplation). Both this dream and its interpretation— as reported in her vita, written by Rudolf of Fulda (ca. 836) some fifty years or so after her death— testify in multiple ways to the literacy and textual practices of Leoba and her fellow monastic women, both those among whom she was raised and (as importantly) those to whom, like the otherwise unknown Hadamout specifically addressed, this vita is offered as a model for behaviour and self-construction.